Shall We Play A Game?

Tonight on Non State Actors Guild at 23:45 eastern.

We’ve got a special treat planned tonight for Non State Actors Guild. Mixed with the stale in-group humor, March Madness brackets, and hedgehog racing, we’re going to talk about what’s happening with Shall We Play A Game? This is an alternate reality game … puzzle … thing .. I began working on in June of 2020, and first mentioned in public in June 2023. It’s on one of my Tumblrs and I just pointed the long idle rauhauser.org at it.

There’s a lot that will remain under wraps, but let me explain what I can for those of you who can’t make the show.

Attention Conservation Notice:

Did you read the lede? Well, did you? That’s it, that’s the post.

Shall We Play A Game?

I began working on the construct that I nominally entitled Shall We Play A Game? in mid-2020. This was a troubled time for me, I’d had some insight about patterns in my life and I was working to free myself from unwanted entanglements. This complex, solitary activity was just the ticket out of that situation.

These eleven posts are the signage at the trailhead. There isn’t a path forward in there, I was just setting the stage, letting people know what they’d need to be able to participate. I expected to draw non-ARG players into this, so there are things that are remedial for those already familiar.

Primacy:

The middle of 2023 was a lot like the middle of 2020 - people in my life were doing things I simply wasn’t going to tolerate. I reached a breaking point, changing playmates/playgrounds, and I got busy with a new job. There was a final straw at this time - I’d been using Evernote to store things and their licensing changed. SWPAG became frozen in time.

Over the last year some changes have been brewing and something that I would never have predicted has come to pass. I was recently invited to join Cicada 3301, the group that produced what’s come to be seen as a truly extraordinary series of complex puzzles between 2012 and 2014. There’s an enormous amount of conspiracy nutter attention on their puzzles. I think part of the reason I’ve been invited is that I’ve roughly handled conspiratards who bother me. The details of that are in Confessions Of A Conspiracy Broker.

Conclusion:

Understand what just happened - I was led onto the field of the team that won the Rose Bowl back to back to back, they tossed me a jersey, and told me to get to work.

So there will be more said about this on the show, and then I guess things will roll out from there, but it’s not clear to me precisely how that happens (yet).